


Downstream

by holyfant



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Open Ending, mortal danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't how the world ends.</p><p>Sherlock, however, has tiny crystals of frost in his hair and his lashes, and his lips, when he turns slowly towards John, are stained a strange, light blue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Downstream

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Глубоко под лед](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058507) by [KatiSark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatiSark/pseuds/KatiSark)



> Um, I'm sorry? Not sure where this came from. Stress relief of sorts, I think. As always, my gratitude to my beta hechicera knows no boundaries.

This isn't how the world ends.

 

Sherlock, however, has tiny crystals of frost in his hair and his lashes, and his lips, when he turns slowly towards John, are stained a strange, light blue.

 

“It's getting precarious,” he says, and he sounds angry rather than worried, which almost makes John laugh, but doesn't completely because he's _so cold_.

 

“I know,” he says, and moves his fingers where he's stuck them in his armpits. He can still feel them, but there is a lightness to his limbs that is worrying – and John hangs onto that, to that worry, because he knows that when he starts to not care, it will mean the cold is dulling his cognitive abilities and the slow ice-slippery slide into loss of consciousness will have started.

 

Sherlock's phone rings: the sound is tinny and flat in the frosty air of their surroundings. Sherlock struggles a little to get his fingers around his phone in the pocket of his coat; his movements are slightly uncoordinated already. John wonders how long they've been in here – it can't have been more than ten, eleven minutes, surely? He isn't sure.

 

“Don't drop it,” John says, and immediately regrets it. The touch of the freezing air on his teeth and tongue sends a small shock of cold through him.

 

Sherlock doesn't even waste energy on a retort, and instead simply raises an eyebrow at John, which fuels the small spark of manic hilarity inside John's chest. He genuinely wants to laugh out loud, but recognises it as the symptom of disorientation that it is and stifles the impulse.

 

“Are you here?” Sherlock says into his phone, the words clipped. The response is clearly not positive, judging from the way his jaw clenches, and something inside John sinks coldly. “For God's sake– ” Sherlock snaps, then cuts himself off. “I told you everything I knew earlier, Lestrade. Tell them to _figure it out_. I'm wasting valuable energy talking to you.” He ends the call abruptly, thrusting the phone back into his coat pocket, lip curled in disgust.

 

“So, fuck,” John says conversationally.

 

“Idiots,” Sherlock says, almost hotly, “they wouldn't be able to find their own arses even if I drew them a map on how to get there.”

 

John is startled into a laugh, a cold, short chuckle that drops to the floor, frozen. Sherlock fixes him with a look that's hard to read, and blinks a growing frost crystal in his lashes away.

 

“Well,” John begins, then pauses to stifle a shiver, “if even you can't figure it out –”

 

“I'd figure it out in _seconds_ if I had a London map and the Met's database,” Sherlock snaps, but then quite suddenly seems to run out of steam. His shoulders drop a little inside his coat and his face loses its expression.

 

“They'll... they'll find us,” John tells him, then purses his lips to counteract the beginning tremble there. The cold is finding its way into his jacket with long, slow fingers.

 

Sherlock says nothing, and even his face betrays nothing; but John knows the lack of contradiction surely doesn't mean that he's right.

 

They stand for a while, leaning against the wall – it feels like a long time, but John is sure that it's only minutes. The gloom around them is blue and still, punctuated by the dark-red shapes of the slabs of silent meat in the dark. _They keep their own meat in here_ , Sherlock had said earlier, sounding vaguely interested. _These are no commercial cuts_. _Someone here likes to slaughter his beef himself._ It doesn't seem important anymore. John's muscles start knitting themselves together in protective bunches; he feels how his shoulders tense, and his hands snake ever further into the relative warmth of his armpits.

 

“Can't... feel my fingers,” Sherlock says almost conversationally, tripping slightly over the words, holding up one of his hands as if inspecting it. “At all. I don't – I don't think I can move them anymore.”

 

“You can,” John says. “Try harder. Then put – put them somewhere warm. On you.”

 

Sherlock bunches his gloved hand into a fist with what seems like considerable effort. “Doesn't really feel like... my own anymore,” Sherlock says, and still manages to sound at least a little interested in the phenomenon.

 

That isn't good, John knows. The feeling is muted, though: a problem that is growing increasingly removed and vague, something that will be over once he's just slept on it, just a good night's sleep, that's all...

 

“Stay awake,” Sherlock says sharply, suddenly closer than he was before. John blinks Sherlock's face back into focus: even paler than usual, familiarly alien. He can feel the weight of Sherlock's hand on his arm; he focuses on it, on that feeling.

 

“I'm... trying,” he says. His lips unstick with a dulled flash of pain. He can feel the small wetness of tiny drops of blood pearling on his mouth, then the feeling is lost again as the drops cool and harden on his skin.

 

“Then try harder.” Sherlock squeezes John's arm with the hand that's wearing his leather glove; the other glove is on John's left hand in his right armpit. _That won't make any difference_ , John had said, almost amused, when Sherlock had offered the glove to him, a couple of minutes after the door of the freezer had clicked shut, quietly and irrevocably. _Just take it_ , Sherlock had said, still looking at the door, trying to find a way to unhinge it or unlock it from the inside out. John had taken the glove without further comment, and had slipped it on, shaking his head to himself, not quite panicked then, not anymore, the dull edge of the cold already blunting his reactions, and feeling a strange security in Sherlock's ability to get them out of there. The glove was too large for him, and still lingeringly warm from Sherlock's hand.

 

“You know what happens if you fall asleep,” Sherlock murmurs.

 

“Yes,” John says. He's aware he's shivering, tremors coming from a deep, slowing-down sort of place inside him, but feels strangely powerless to stop it; his body doesn't feel like it's his own anymore. “How long have we been in here?” he asks, to distract himself.

 

Sherlock makes a movement with his upper body, but aborts it and sighs (a stream of warm air over John's face, that leaves it colder than before). “Can't get... my phone,” he says. “I can't feel my hands.”

 

“Yeah,” John breathes. Sherlock's gloveless hand, the one not on John's arm, is tucked into his scarf, close to the vulnerable warmth of his neck. John wonders vaguely what Sherlock's heart rate is right now, and if he was counting before he lost his sense of connection to his fingers. His own hands are lost to his consciousness, he realises: his toes, his fingers... he can't move them anymore.

 

“Twenty-one minutes,” Sherlock finally says, sounding strained and unsure. John knows he's taking a guess, probably based on the symptoms they're exhibiting, but it's a very unimportant, far-away sort of knowledge.

 

“It's – m-minus twenty-six in here,” John manages.

 

“Hmm,” Sherlock affirms. _Industrial meat freezer_ , he'd said before, his hand flat on the door, trying to feel for a hidden latch or grip or any kind of clue, _but not very modern. Not the kind that uses a blast chiller to freeze the meat in minutes, though that's preferred nowadays because it allows for a shorter window for the incubation of bacteria. Good for us. It's usually minus forty in those. It's not airtight either. Here, feel, this side of the door. Feel it? Air. This freezer wouldn't pass a health inspection, but once again: good for us. There is a minimal circulation of oxygen. We won't suffocate anytime soon; we'll freeze first. They know that. They're just putting us in here to die slowly._ _Look, they didn't even take my phone off me. They know we'll be dead before someone finds us._ The deductions had risen from his mouth in clouds of warm breath. John wishes, with a sudden and intense desire, that Sherlock would tell him more about the freezer, that he'd read the history of the meat in its muscle and strings of fat, tell John about the illegal hormone treatments, the cows' food, anything. Sherlock is silent now. He doesn't speak.

 

“We're not going to... last much longer than forty minutes in here,” John says, and he knows even that might be something of a stretch. Somewhere, deep in his mind, he knows the steps, crammed into him during his training and rendered real in the cold long hours of the desert nights in Afghanistan: shivering and trembling, loss of feeling in extremities, mental confusion, loss of muscular coordination, loss of ability of rational decision-making, sensory confusion, unconsciousness, and finally, remotely, a thought like smoke: clinical death. There really isn't much he can do here, in this freezer, and he can feel his mental alertness weakening with every minute.

 

“The police'll be here s-sooner,” Sherlock says, shivering on the sibilant, teeth clacking together.

 

“Yeah,” John says, but is still quite aware of the fact that Sherlock had said not long ago _they know we'll be dead before someone finds us_ and that he had been unable to give the police their precise whereabouts when he called them: the thugs that had cornered and drugged them at a meeting point with a bribed member of the homeless network had made sure their prisoners had only woken up once inside this industrial complex, that had offered even Sherlock little clues as to their location. Some clumps of London dirt, concrete walls and linoleum floors that were certainly from the sixties, an industrial building sufficiently lead-lined that it stopped GPS signal tracking – that was about it.

 

“We're still in... London,” Sherlock says, and he suffers through a shiver so violent John feels the jerky movements of Sherlock's body next to his even through his growing haze of dissociation. “Not that many dis-disused indus-industrial buildings of... this type. Yard aren't idiots.”

 

John tries to smile, but finds his mouth doesn't really want to cooperate. “That's not what – what you said... earlier,” he manages.

 

“Maybe we sh-shouldn't sit,” Sherlock murmurs after a long moment, but he doesn't sound convinced, and makes no move to get up from the freezer floor. He looks around at the silent cuts of beef on their hooks as though they have the answer.

 

“I don't – I don't even r'member sitting down,” John says, and frowns. Suddenly there is the threat of a dark cloud of fear, hanging over him: where is he and how did...? The freezer is half dark, the walls shine blue with ice, there are the grotesque dull-red shapes of meat hanging from hooks, and what...? Something inside him shifts; an instinct, honed sharp from his training, that has him pressing his eyes shut and centering himself: a point of solidity, a hard core inside himself.

 

“John. _John_ ,” someone says, low and quiet. It's Sherlock, John realises, and the threat of panic recedes further. “I sat down... first. Then you. You – you tried to get me up.” John squints at him. Sherlock's lips are blue and trembling. There are frost crystals in the curl that hangs over his forehead.

 

“What are you –” John says, but the question dies a premature death in his unwilling mouth.

 

“T-tell me,” Sherlock says, and John registers that Sherlock's hand is still gripping his arm with some strength. He curls into that touch, into the solid press of Sherlock's body. “Tell me what's happening.”

 

“We're...” John has to pause, body stuttering through a massive shiver. “... losing m-muscle control,” he finishes. “Vital functions are – slowing down. Body is trying to... pre-preserve energy. Senses – dulling. We shouldn't...” He thinks of saying the word 'panic', but even in his head it's a mess of consonants, confusing, oppressive. So he just stops and looks up at Sherlock's face.

 

“Jesus,” John says as the clarity of Sherlock's face improves as he trains his eyes on it, then blurs again. “You're – you're dying.”

 

“So're you,” Sherlock says. Then, paradoxically: “You're n-not dying.”

 

John looks at him, at his unnaturally white face over the dark collar of his coat, the bluish blur of his mouth, and feels the sudden and forceful flaring of old embers inside of him. There is so much he needs to say, so much that his stiffening mind is stumbling over all of it, can't get any of it in any order that he can say. “Of all the – of all the ways that I th-thought we'd go,” he finally says, with difficulty: the words eat themselves, unwilling.

 

“This is the l-least elegant,” Sherlock finishes, and John wants to laugh, because only Sherlock could be – he estimates, but things aren't very clear – about eight minutes away from loss of consciousness from hypothermia and manage to sound _sulky_. It's a strangely warm feeling, somewhere in his gut, in his body that's growing increasingly cold and pained and rubbed raw from the sharp icy air in his lungs; he honestly feels like dropping his head on Sherlock's shoulder and just going to sleep. He feels like that would be _fine._

 

“John,” Sherlock says quietly, “don't.”

 

John blinks, and realises he has indeed let his face drop to Sherlock's shoulder; the skin of his face is so numb he can only very barely feel the soft scratch of the material of Sherlock's coat.

 

“Don't go to sleep,” Sherlock says, and gives a weak little jerking movement of his shoulder that John supposes is meant to help him pick up his head.

 

“'m not,” he says, but Sherlock's coat is dark and soothing against his eyes, and somehow he doesn't feel cold anymore, not at all. In fact, he feels very good, pressed against Sherlock that way, in the half-dark, together. Very vaguely, with a soft, far-off sense of regret, he wishes they had done this more often; not just scratched and bit and fucked roughly whenever they were both fit to go insane with frustrations of different kinds, but just sat together sometimes, slotted into each other without pressure, just like this... but it's not hard to let it go, then and there, to release the thought into the dark, rushing river in his mind, that he can hear when he tries, that is invisible but fast and growing louder, pulling at him with eager fingers.

 

Sherlock's body is motionless next to his; the shivers have subsided. John knows, somehow, that this should worry him, but it doesn't, really. It's not that bad, like this.

 

“Is... this it?” John asks Sherlock's shoulder, and feels the slight twitching as Sherlock apparently laughs soundlessly in response. He feels floaty, as though the river is carrying him, holding him aloft.

 

“No,” Sherlock says, and then there is the strange sensation of slightly warm air in John's hair as Sherlock apparently turns his head and breathes against John's head. “No,” Sherlock tells his hair again, and John can almost make out the movement of his lips. He feels good. He wonders fleetingly why they were so cold, before.

 

“I think it is,” he says, voice muffled by Sherlock's coat. Sherlock's breath is warm and steady. They're together. Sherlock's hand on John means that wherever they're going, the river is taking both of them there.

 

“Well, you're an idiot,” Sherlock whispers, and John feels a warm flush of raw contentment at that: as long as Sherlock says things like that, he's still very much alive. Sherlock kisses his hair, or at least, smears his mouth against John's head, a barely-there feeling that nevertheless sets off something of warmth against the numbness of John's skin. Sherlock doesn't usually kiss him like that. Whenever Sherlock does kiss it's hard and adrenaline-edged and completely purposeful, not something that is warm in a cold place.

 

“Sherlock,” John tells Sherlock's coat, slurring the name a little. He waits a moment for acknowledgement, but none comes. “I don't... regret it.” His mouth is unwilling to say more, and there is nothing else he can imagine saying that could mean anything to Sherlock.

 

“I do,” Sherlock says, very quietly, so quietly John isn't sure it's real. He blinks against Sherlock's coat, tries to break through the feeling of sinking, of going down. “I should have...” Sherlock says, and presses his face further into John's hair, and as far as John can tell, the touch of his mouth is definitely a kiss. Sherlock mumbles something, unintelligible, and whatever it is, it's fine, it's okay. John tries to say so, and finds that he has lost his mouth somewhere along the way. He closes his eyes, and focuses his energy on feeling the warm spot of Sherlock's breath on his scalp, the far-off press of his body, the muted roaring of the river, and the soft descent to the bottom, as though carried down by many hands.


End file.
